Who's up for a quick Faux Danish recipe?
Ingredients:
- One can of refrigerated Crescent rolls.
- Cream Cheese or Neuchaftel (Low Fat Cream Cheese) 8 ounce package
- Table Sugar and/or 10X Powdered Sugar
- Fresh Lemon Wedge
- Cinnamon
- Chopped Walnuts or other topping you desire
Get to work:
Preheat the oven to the temp stated on the can label.
Have the Cheese at room temperature (in this summer heat it varies) but cheese should be pliable and not stiff. You could soften it in the microwave, just don't heat it up.
For one can of Crescent rolls I used 1/4 to 1/3 of the package of cheese. Save the rest for something else or use more cheese if you want them to be heavy and gooey. Your preference.
In a bowl: Combine the Cheese, Juice of the Lemon wedge, and about 4 heaping tabletop (cutlery flatware) Tablespoons. I did not use a measuring spoon. If you want to be more precise, use a little less than 1/4 cup of Table Sugar (granulated).
Blend well.
On a baking sheet, no need to grease it, place two crescent rolls long sides together, so they form a rectangle. Squish the dough together where the two rolls are aligned. Repeat until you have 4 rectangles of dough. A package of 8 crescent rolls will make 4 Faux Danish.
Lightly sprinkle Cinnamon on the dough. If you want to add nuts to the dough do this now or just sprinkle them on top once the crescents are shaped.
Start at the short side of the dough rectangle and roll it like a log. Once you get to the end of the dough, bring the two sides together and squish them so they meet and hold their shape. Stretch the little Faux Danish shape a bit and make a crater in the center with your palm or fingers. The dough might shrink back so show it you're in charge and make it stay the way you want it to. Down boy!
Take a spoonful of the cheese mixture and place it into the crater you just made. Sprinkle some nuts onto the cheese if you like.
Bake according to the label, about 14 minutes. Once cool add a drizzle of icing, or if you want a glazed danish, drizzle on the icing while they are still warm as it will melt and cover the roll.
I experimented with these a few times. Sometimes I used 10X Sugar which made the filling very light and fluffy which made them taste better the day after because the filling firmed up in the fridge. I also went part table sugar and part 10X, I thought this had the best flavor.
Another variation was to make the Danish with some fruit spread (sugar-free jam) and the cheese. I also used fruit. Finally, I used refrigerated non-flaky round biscuits in the tube. I thought dough in a tube would have the same flavor, but the tastes were not exactly the same. For the round biscuits I made more filling as there were 8 biscuits. I just baked them the same way, stretching the dough a bit and made a crater for the filling.
If you have extra cheese mixture left over, you can keep it in the fridge and use another time or in other ways. Probably be safe to keep for 3-5 days?
For the drizzled icing I just used about 4 heaping tabletop Tablespoons of 10X and added a teensy bit of room temperature milk.
Cold milk makes the 10X lumpy and it's easier to not battle the little lumps. Sometimes along with the milk I add clear color Vanilla Extract. 10X needs a small amount of liquid in case you aren't familiar with it.
This week I don't want to use the oven too often due to the summer temps. Luckily I had a Lemon Ginger Honey Tea Cake already baked. I've also used the slow cooker a few times. Slow cooked chicken falls right off the bones and made many meals- chicken noodle soup, chicken and rice, chicken with fresh spinach and noodles, chicken sandwiches, and oh, all those tidbits for Lucy.
Have a great weekend and try to stay cool, use sunscreen!
I will get the necklace finished this week or next at the latest. I used to always push myself to finish what I started, but with things changing at home and so many things to deal with, I have let things slide.
